Why the health of the Venice lagoon has serious implications for the city's heritage

Continuing Venice in Peril's collaboration with the Coastal Research Unit of Cambridge University, a new project was launched to explain the reasons behind a 28cm rise in the water levels of Venice.

From 2014, when the mobile barriers known as MOSE are expected to be finished, flooding should become a thing of the past. But the barriers can do nothing to counteract the chronically raised water level.

How to resolve this problem will be the great challenge of our century.

The aim of the collaboration was to unite the most expert scientists in the field from Italy and abroad, holding a focused and open discussion, with a view to producing a clear, consensual and peer-reviewed publication explaining the issues.